staying away from a toxic forum

1. Quietly delete your account at that forum. Don't go out in flames. Say nothing. Just delete your account. Do it right now. 2. Install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock/ or something similar and use it on its most powerful setting. 3. Find a therapist or other healthy resource to learn ways to get bullies out of your life. It will be hard at first not to go back to the forum, "just to see," but let Leechblock do its job. After awhile, the urge and pain will fade dramatically and you can view the episode from a healthy, helpful distance.

What gets to me most about the bullying is that nobody stops it Thank goodness that this time around you ended up in a situation where someone does have the power to stop it: you. You are an adult now, you are not that victimized teenager anymore. I do this meditative exercise where I imagine myself making contact with past versions of myself and offer them comfort and love from the future. In abandoning this forum you will be able to turn back and address your past self with the assurance of one who has made the future into a safe place for them to one day occupy. Remove it from your bookmarks, cancel your notifications, begin nibbling away at whatever connections tie you to the site. Begin thinking of that period of your life in the past tense. Check in less and less often. No dramatic goodbyes, no having the last word. Time is money, and there's no sense in throwing good money after bad. Invest in life that allows you to do and be your best.

I also wonder why it is that I attract bullies. It makes me feel like there is something wrong with me, and maybe that's part of why I keep going back...to figure that out. The reason that you are attracting bullies is that you keep offering yourself to them as a target. If you stayed away from the forum, you wouldn't be a target, and they'd go looking for someone else. But they know that you're not going to do anything, you'll keep turning up, so they're on the lookout for you. If, instead, you said "well, fuck this" and just never went to the forum again, not only would you never see them again, you'd also be taking away one of their targets, so they'd also lose something too. I was bullied too, and I was just as pissed as you that none of the other people around me seemed to want to help me. That's something I'm still strugging with. But one thing that did finally help me was giving up the secret fantasy that someday I'd magically say the right thing that would make everyone else stand up and cheer for me and make them feel awful and apologize; deep deep down, that's what I was hoping would happen, and I have a hunch that deep deep down you're kind of hoping for that to happen too. But it's never going to happen. You will never ever have that whole come-to-Jesus moment where they apologize. But the reason that moment won't happen isn't because you're not saying or doing anything wrong -- the reason it won't happen is becuase they are EMOTIONALLY RETARDED, and you're trying to talk to them on a normal level. THEY'RE the ones with the problem. They just plain aren't equipped to give you the kind of response you're hoping they'll give you. They will never stop treating you this way -- the only thing you can do is decide you don't deserve it, and that you will remove yourself from people who don't treat you the way you deserve. It sucks, I know. But you can stop it. Good luck.

I think I keep coming back because I want other people to acknowledge their behavior. Somehow without that acknowledgment, it feels like my reality is being invalidated. Yes. It does feel like that. But at the same time, demanding acknowledgement from these toxic people means that you are giving them the power to control your reality. Even if you're not demanding it out loud, you're still putting yourself on the hook. You're saying to yourself, "I'll know I'm not crazy when I can get this awful person -- who doesn't have my best interests at heart -- to admit that she was wrong." She's abusing you because she wants to, and right now you have an agreement that she will stop abusing you as soon as she admits that she was wrong. Why would she ever admit that she's wrong? You want closure. Closure doesn't happen very often, and it's kind of a shame that it's such a feature of narrative because it sets false expectations for real life. Winning and closure are two different things. How you win is by not playing their game; by telling yourself, "this awful person is probably going to keep being awful for years. But NOT TO ME, because I am OUTTA HERE."

OK, after the whole palaver above, I read what the two posters above me said, and now I wish to clarify a bit: I don't think anyone gives out an "hey, I'm easy to bully" scent. Also, few people are probably entirely transparent during the first few interactions as easily bullied. But there probably are a few things which experienced bullies can sniff out relatively quickly (and not necessarily only from directly interacting with you - in places like groups, forums, online or off-line communities, workplaces etc. they can learn A LOT from observing other people interact with each other). Off the top of my head, in no particular order I am thinking: 1. Being overy diffident. 2. Being a people pleaser. 3. Being overly and unhealthily concerned with other people's opinion (as in not just considerate and respectful, but really afraid of what others might think and taking this as a crucial criterium for making decisions, for instance). 4. An overwhelming need to explain yourself and to be understood (I think this is your one. It's also mine, and in my life it's done tons of damage. Not with bullies, but otherwise. Just think how much time can be wasted like this!). 5. Constantly deferring to others. 6. Constantly qualifying what you say in such a way that you actually continuously belittle yourself, your opinions, your qualifications. 7. Having some characteristic, preoccupation, ideas etc. which are exotic or unpopular in your group, and which serve to single you out. This one, I suspect, is the most obvious one. 8. Not being able to advocate for yourself. This connects to the next one (seemingly paradoxically, but not really) 9. Tolerating bad behaviour, or staying on after you have addressed bad behaviour and the situation wasn't resolved. 10. Showing your vulnerabilities in a reckless fashion. A lot of people do this , and I think it is a strategy that has, at times worked well for a lot of us, say, during early childhood. This is a bit akin to the submission rituals we see in dogs. For a bully, though, this is like a year full of Christmases. Don't do it with anyone before you know them really well and have good reason to trust them. 11. Not reading the lay of the land well. For instance, in a work situation where creating what is known as a hostile environment will not be tolerated, you speaking up for yourself will be well received; however, if for whatever reason your bully has the backing of the powers-to-be, or even only of the collective, you are shot. Your approach to the situation needs to be informed by what is going on around you and with the other people involved (whether actively or passively). If you show yourself to be oblivious to the general mood, you are more likely to become and remain a victim. etc., there probably are other things. But, just to show once more that you don't uniquely ATTRACT bullies from the get-go, I'll tell you that people can be judged as being easily bullied for displaying some of the above, the bully tried to kick-start the action only to find themselves disappointed (for instance, in my country one of the rules of etiquette says that in very polite settings you always defer to others upon first meeting them - in a way, you measure inceasing friendship and intimacy by how much more comfortable you are with disagreeing, or expressing contrary views/opinions etc. I moved elsewhere for a while, and in the circles I moved in this was not the norm, so I think I came across as quite the push-over. Also, we are tought to be very self-deprecating, so I frequently came across as lacking in self-confidence and self-esteem, which is vey much not the case. It was actually quite comical to see attempts at bullying fall flat on their face). Anyway, the upshot of this is that whilst I have been the "victim" of quite a few attempts at bullying, I have never in my life been bullied (I've my own menu of toxic behaviours I keep getting myself into). So, from the bullies perspective, they cannot accurately differentiate between a likely target and a misfire. They cast their net wide, and usually something gets stuck. And that, in my view, is the only sure-fire way, as an adult, to remain a victim of bullying - by not leaving. Basically - so what if you are insecure, have vulenrabilities which you may have unwisely disclosed, so what if you are diffident, if your opinions are wavering etc. etc. etc., the only way you will get bullied is by staying put.

>I think I keep coming back because I want other people to acknowledge their behavior. Somehow without that acknowledgment, it feels like my reality is being invalidated. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my best friend refused to defend me or even acknowledge that it was happening, or how a sadistic teacher got me in trouble when the bullies were picking on me in class and pretended I was provoking them. I still have nightmares about this stuff. This level of personal psycho-analysis is not healthy. There is a forum where people are mean to you. You keep going back. This happens to lots of people. They do things that are bad for them. I'm not the type of person to discount mental health. I take psychiatric medication myself. My point is that you are going into these deep twisted arguments such as 'invalidation of reality stemming from childhood problems.' That sounds like some sort of post-modern Freudian analysis that you need to drop. Just keep talking to your friends off the forum and stop going there. I know what I have said is unfair. It would have been perhaps like someone telling me to just stop being sad. Ok, I get that. But you either need to exert control over your life or get help if you can't.

Do you stay up on the computer until it's time to go to sleep? If so, stop that. Bedtime is not screentime. Get more exercise, wear yourself out, relax in the evenings in a way that doesn't involve sitting stationary and staring into a bright light while your mind races.

How do I get the nightmares to stop? There's a reason that even as adults, we still have nightmares about overdue papers and showing up in school in our underpants. The longer you stay away, the better it will get, but it's not an immediate thing.

I also wonder why it is that I attract bullies. But what you're talking about isn't attracting bullies. It's actively seeking bullies out. Remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_characters#Wowbagger.2C_the_Infinitely_Prolonged Whose mission was to go throughout the universe and insult each creature that had ever lived since the dawn of time, individually, personally, and alphabetically? I had a friend who was like that, only about politics and conspiracy theories. He used to declaim, "The real battles are being fought in the realm of ideas!" and felt that VOIP arguing for six to seven hours a night was the absolute most effective form of activism he could possibly engage in. The Kingdom of I Was Right would come, he felt, when he had argued with all the people from all the nations until they all thought exactly as he did about everything. He felt that my preferred form of direct action (Amnesty letters and such) was far too piecemeal, because I could only hope to make a small contribution to getting one person out of jail at a time, whereas, when he was done, nobody would ever even want to falsely imprison another person again, and so there would be no more prisoners of conscience to write about. Some of what he said, he believed; the rest of it was trolling [1] but I think his real point was to get me to finally admit that he was right and I was wrong, whereupon, having acknowledged that I wasn't in fact too good for him, I would inevitably give in and sleep with him. [2] I get the sense that you, timsneezed, have a nobler mission. I think you did internalize the message that "bullies are cowards, if you don't fight back, you're part of the problem" and that you are, in some ways, trying to be the stand-up person who wasn't there for you when you were a kid. I just don't think it works. In fact, the single thing that keeps people in abusive relationships is the belief that if they can explain why the abuse is bad, they will get the abuser to stop. You should definitely fight bullies, but marching into Bullytown with a target on your chest and a KICK ME sign on your back, is not making you any less of a victim. Instead, it's making you a victim with a megaphone. Wrestling with pigs. Imagine Bullytown has a hog waller and you are marching straight for it every time. Don't go there. If you seriously want to stop bullying, there's a page of http://www.vachss.com/help_text/yv_bullying.html for you to find a way to get started. [1] Or so he said - if you never commit to any of the beliefs you declaim, you can never be wrong [2] My religion was particularly at fault in this, since it showed that I had a "hierarchical view of the universe" - if I could think that God is better than me, it follows that I could think that I was better than my friend, so if I just stopped believing in God ("HOW CAN YOU WILFULLY SUBMIT TO A SYSTEM OF POWER, CONTROL AND DOMINATION? ANSWER ME! LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!") then my hierarchical worldview would collapse, resulting in the inexorable fall of my drawers.